An armored car rushed down a Jump City street, careening at reckless speeds. Inside it was, as expected, large bags of money. An old-fashioned robbery. Other people pulled hostages and did embezzling scams – the Hive Five liked to keep it simple. Stealing was their thing, and they liked it that way. Gizmo, Jinx, and Mammoth had once got hired out by Slade, but that wasn't the group's style anymore (Save for the news which brought them back together at the moment).

So, even now, during their reunion, the Hive Five's tactics hadn't changed.

Much.

Flash trailed after the car, grinning ear to ear. It wouldn't be hard to catch up with it, provided nothing unexpected came up.

Robin was hopping from roof to roof, trying to pick up speed. He grabbed at the cable-line on his belt, getting ready to shoot himself a line.

Flash, on the other hand, was a little perplexed. All the car was doing was driving, albeit at high speeds. There wasn't anyone shooting at him, which was definitely off-key. Usually, a bank robbery? Someone was going to try to hit him with bullets, or lasers, or superpowers. Anything. That someone wasn't making an active attempt to stop him from getting close was weird, to say the least.

Robin never got a chance to shoot his cable-line. Seeing no reason not to, Flash picked up the speed, racing to the door, keeping by it's side while he looked in.

No one was driving the car.

"ROBIN! There's no one in the car!"

Robin frowned, thinking it over while his body moved on it's own, jumping from one building to the other without so much as a passing thought.

"Get back! I'm going to blow its tires!" Robin shouted back, reaching around for a few razorangs, throwing them with expert aim. The tires were slashed, and promptly blew out, skidding the car to a halt. Flash, now not having to worry about a friendly fire incident, ran back up to the driver's seat, forcing the door open, and examining the vehicle at super-speed.

He heard a beep. At first, he was confused.

Then he heard another. And another. And another. Each one picking up in speed after the last.

Finding the source of the noise, he looked underneath the dash – it was a tiny, nearly flat rectangular piece of metal, obviously high-tech. A red light flashed, dimmed, and then with another beep, flashed again. It did this again. Flash's eyes widened, and he bolted from the car, figuring neither of them had time to disarm the thing, or throw it somewhere safe.

"IT'S GONNA BLOW!" Flash yelled, getting a distance away from the car, glad his innate speed would easily carry him away from the blast radius. Robin followed suit. Fortunately, civilians had already gotten the sense to run away as the car barreled down the street.

The beeping grew more furious. It reached a climax, where one beep was almost synchronous with the next. The two heroes were on edge, just waiting for it to explode while they watched it.

Then, quite suddenly, the beeping simply stopped.

Still on alert, the two furrowed their brows, examining the car as best as they could from a distance.

Once roughly a minute had passed, Flash turned to Robin and spoke.

"A dud?"

"Looks like it." Robin replied, warily moving forward. He stepped into the driver's seat, looking around. Flash stepped in at his side a moment after.

"The bomb was under the dash." Flash said, cutting the search to its end.

Robin looked underneath and found… nothing.

"Its not THERE, Flash. Are you sure it was under the dash?"

"A hundred percent sure." He said, now just more confused.

With a not so well hidden frustration, Robin went back around, and checked the back of the armored car.

Snarling, after looking inside, he went back to Flash and tried to rearrange his own expressions to maintain a professional calm. It was necessary. He just didn't like losing without even a fight.

"The money's not there." He muttered.

"What? You serious?"

"Yeah. It's gone. All of it."

"But…that's crazy. We never saw anyone leave the vehicle…"

"And no one was driving it in the first place, Flash. Seems we have something more than a usual bank robbery on our hands."

He pulled out a tiny remote, and clicked a button, calling the R-Cycle to him. The police would be here soon enough to do the paperwork and such.

So, silently, he rode away back to Titans Tower.

Flash, on the other hand, stayed for a moment, still confused.

---

"Holy CRAP, Wykkyd, did you really get ALL of it?" Gizmo said, a little dumbfounded. Currently, he, and the rest of the Hive Five, were hiding out in a tiny safehouse in Jump City they had created way, way back.

Sweating a bit and breathing harder than usual, Wykkyd nodded. It wasn't easy work teleporting that much money while a car was making insane turns and dives. It would have been a brief respite when the car finally stopped, but that only put the pressure on him even more, as he knew it meant the heroes were getting close.

"Did you make sure to snag my device, too? We don't want them getting any evidence."

Wykkyd nodded a second time, and pulled out the metallic device, handing it over to Gizmo. Gizmo took it and grinned slyly, admiring his own work.

"If it beeps and has a little red light, they ALWAYS think it's a bomb." He said out loud, though mostly complimenting himself a little. One could hardly hold it against him this time – it was a good idea.

"How much did we grab, Gizmo?" See-More asked, smirking a little, enjoying to be back in the old business.

"Must be at least over a hundred grand." Gizmo's smile grew wider. He was enjoying this too. Much more than going solo. Though he wouldn't admit it.

"Hot DAMN! That'd be enough ta roll 'round in!" Billy exclaimed, fumbling through the cash and looking at Wykkyd with a grin. They hadn't pulled a bank or armored car job in ages. "We could really do somethin' with this."

"Don't go thinking too far ahead," See-More cut in. "We have no idea how much money we're going to have to spend just looking for Mammoth. Speaking of, Gizmo, has your auto-search found any leads."

Gizmo slid his backpack off and set it down. A top component flipped open, revealing underneath a laptop styled computer. The screen flickered on to a large yellow 'G' symbol, and then gave way to the actual computer screen. Gizmo worked the mouse down to an icon the bottom right corner, double clicked and a window popped up.

Gizmo sighed. "Well, I've got a few news and police reports of convenience stores and the like being knocked over in…" His eyes ran over all the text rapidly, absorbing it. "New York, Houston, Tijuana, and a couple of other places. But the dates were only a little after he left the Hive Five. Not much to go on." In his head, he cursed, unsatisfied that he wasn't able to turn up much. Gizmo took pride in his craft, and when it didn't produce consistently outstanding results, he became frustrated. "So, I've got nothing." He grumbled. "How are we gonna do this?" He asked See-More.

See-More paused, and shrugged weakly. "I don't know. None of us were ever really detectives, were we?"

The rest of the team didn't say anything. They knew this wasn't their field. They just pulled an excellent robbery and set themselves up with some fairly choice select funds. But investigation? They weren't primed for that. Hive Academy didn't give them much background in it. Students were trained to create diabolical plots, not solve them.

"Well, you've got more than enough money now to supply all your gadgets, Gizmo, right?" See-More said, sitting down.

"Yeah. So?"

"So… that's something, I guess."

The room went silent. Gizmo, after a pause, distracted himself with more work, seeing whatever he could scrounge up, even after the auto-search. See-More stared off into space a little. Billy and Wykkyd sat together, and signed to each other about nothing in particular, just to pass the time.

Then, See-More's cell phone rang again.

See-More fished it out quickly, and Gizmo tossed him the same gadget he used before. A little flimsily, See-More hit the talk button, and slammed the device on the back of the phone.

"Samuel Beckinson?" The raspy voice said.

"Yeah, it's me."

"… Gizmo, good effort, but it's not going to work."

See-More went silent. Gizmo was going to be furious after the call once he saw the results.

"Anyway. I traced down something for your group."

"Give it." See-More said, not offering any of his usual relaxed attitude.

"Any of you ever knew Mammoth had a sister?"

"What?"

"Surprised me too. Mammoth – Real name, Baran Flinders. Brother of Selinda Flinders. But Mammoth's not so known familial ties isn't why I'm calling."

"The info. Now." See-More demanded.

"Well, way back when, even before Hive Academy, seems Baran and Selinda were brought to a Markovian scientist, by the name of Helga Jace. She specializes in metahumans."

"So Helga has Mammoth?"

"Don't jump to conclusions, Sam. Helga's just the link to the info. There's been reports out of Markovia that there's been some stolen files at her old lab there. Dug a little deeper than the news reports, and I found out that it was specifically Mammoth's old files stolen. Not even so much as a hint that they took anyone else's files, not even his sister's. Quite interesting, don't you think?"

See-More gritted his teeth. He didn't like being told, even indirectly, by some stranger on where to go and what to do. Especially not when it came to Hive Five business.

"So. Markovia."

"Yes."

"Give me an address and save Gizmo some work."

"You'll get a text message in a moment. I'll try to find more information after that. Goodbye, Sam."

The phone clicked off. Soon, a text message did come into the cellphone's inbox.

Gizmo rushed over, scanned the records – and his device failed to turn up a source a second time. He snarled, snatched the device off the back of the phone, and went back to his backpack.

See-More put the cell phone in his pocket and walked over to the tarp that was slung over the aircraft that Gizmo made. It was the Hive Five's personal transportation.

'Markovia', he thought to himself.